The Investigators

The three pre-generated investigators arrive on the same winter evening, for three different reasons, and end up under the same roof: the Pensão da Dona Ercília, the only boarding house in the village that takes outsiders during the festival.

• Eduardo "Dudu" Fonseca comes up on the last train from Santos with a briefcase of RFFSA cost reports.
• Helena "Lenita" Castro is on the same train, in third class, with a box of protest leaflets and her brother's letter (see Handout 1: Tonico's last letter).
• Arthur Mendes drives up the old road in a borrowed Beetle and arrives as the others are carrying their bags in.

Dona Ercília gives them supper together, because there is only one table. Let the players introduce their investigators there. Before they go to bed, she puts a pinch of salt on each of their pillows and will not say why.

Each one holds a thread + contribute

Using your own investigators + contribute

Any 1970s investigators will do. Give each player one of the three threads above as their reason to be on the mountain: someone checking the accounts, someone looking for a missing relative who worked on the tank cars, someone who once saw something in a photograph of the Serra. Keep the Contact track for each of them from the first night.

“Ten thousand litres of fuel vanish from this yard every week without an invoice, and I am not leaving until I find out who is responsible.”

Civil Engineer and Financial Auditor, RFFSA

Motivation

Sent from RFFSA headquarters in Rio de Janeiro to audit the absurd costs of a funicular line about to close. He needs to prove efficiency to earn a promotion, and suspects the water and supply spending hides embezzlement by the old British-descended staff.

Personal hook

His father helped assemble the fixed engines at the Fourth Landing and went mad in the 1950s, repeating broken phrases about "the purple stone that drinks the sea". Eduardo wants to clear the family name.

Threads to pull

• The Company Car
• The Fourth Landing
• The Amethyst Heart

“If they close this railway, the mountain people are cut off and the port becomes a hostage of the trucks. We will not let them close Grota Funda!”

Social Sciences Student and Community Organiser, Santos

Motivation

Rode the train up from Santos to protest the end of passenger service between the coast and the plateau. She sees the closure as the military government's social neglect, not knowing the true reason is a dark bargain with the local cult.

Personal hook

Her younger brother, a young railway worker who cleaned the tank cars in Santos, vanished two weeks ago. His last letter read: "There is something alive at the bottom of the company tank, Lenita. And it calls me by name." See The Company Car.

Threads to pull

• The Company Car
• Grota Funda
• The Company of Shadows

“The fog of Paranapiacaba hides more than Victorian ruins. And my Leica will record whatever is in there.”

Investigative Photojournalist, Diário da Noite (São Paulo)

Motivation

Sent to cover the controversy over the funicular's closure, he finds the village preparing a winter festival that no newspaper has ever mentioned. He does not want the government's version; he wants the scoop on the mysterious deaths and the eerie isolation of the British village.

Personal hook

Years ago he photographed a tunnel on the Serra and, developing the print, saw that the mist in the background had the exact shape of faces twisting in agony. A representative of the old British board confiscated the photo before it reached the paper. He has come back for the original negative. See The Mist.

Threads to pull

• The Mist
• The Castelinho
• The Chief Engineer